Benedict and Brazos 26 by E. Jefferson Clay

Author:E. Jefferson Clay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gunfighters, bounty hunters, colt 45, western series, george g gilman, piccadilly publishing, james reasoner, pulp westerns, westerns fiction ebboks
Publisher: Piccadilly

Chapter Six – No Tears for Tom Sudden

THE FIST ABE Martin didn’t see coming exploded in his face and he stumbled back against the wall with the room spinning wildly about him. Somehow the Box Star cowhand caught his balance and reached gropingly for a chair. Tom Sudden loomed before him beneath the oil lamp of the old shack on Barton Street and though Martin saw the punch coming this time, he couldn’t avoid it. Stars exploded in his head and he went down untidily with crimson dribbling from his mouth and his hair in his eyes.

“Kick his head in, Tom,” suggested Slattery, his eyes glittering. “Nothin’ like a taste of leather to bring a feller’s memory back.”

Tom Sudden didn’t seem to hear, his lean, pale face wearing an odd mixture of anger and regret as he stood above the fallen cowhand and massaged his knuckles.

“Get up, Abe,” he said.

“I ... I can’t.”

“Yes you can, Abe. They hit me lots harder than that in the State Pen and I always got up. The State Pen, Abe. You must have heard of that place? It’s where they send you when they find you guilty of rustlin’. And do you know how they do that, Abe? Well, one way, is by gettin’ dirty, lyin’ cowboys to get up before a judge and swear falsely against a man for something he didn’t do.”

“I didn’t swear false, Tom,” the waddy insisted. “I said what I seen ... found the beeves gone that night ... tracked ’em to your place with the Murdocks ...”

“You’re a liar, Abe.”

Martin slowly lifted his battered face. The man had been on Front Street eight hours earlier when Tom Sudden and his four gun hung henchmen had ridden in. Sudden and Bourne Murdock had met and talked in front of the hotel and parted without violence. The word went around that there wasn’t going to be trouble after all and Martin had been fool enough to believe it. He’d been so relieved he’d had several drinks at the Nugget and it had been around ten when he weaved his way down Barton Street to the old house that the Box Star hands made use of when in Babylon overnight. Sudden was waiting for him.

Sudden hadn’t come back to shake hands all around and say, “Forget about it, boys.” Sudden had just bided his time to pick off the first stray, which happened to be Abe Martin.

“You got no right to use me this way, Tom,” he blurted. “We was friends.”

“Were,” Sudden said inexorably.

Martin grabbed the chair and dragged himself to his feet, angry and defiant now.

“You’ve changed, Tom!” he accused. “You never needed a bunch behind you to take on a man before.”

“Get out!” Sudden rapped to his men without taking his eyes off big Abe. “All of you!”

The outlaws trooped out. Sudden drew his gun and tossed it onto the bunk where Martin had planned to sleep off the whisky.

“You were sayin’, Abe?”

Martin swung from the hips and slammed a hooking right for the jaw.

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